When people mention RPC in this context, are they talking about a generic concept, or are they referring specifically to SOAP? Because SOAP was always a complex mess, pretending that WSDL files somehow added semantic meaning to data, when it fact it was just a serialization format with excessively verbose data typing and validation of element presence/counts. SOAP made even the smallest projects feel like a bloated nightmare typical of "Enterprise bureaucracy". SOAP is the very reason why people eagerly latched onto JSON and REST the moment it became viable.